Empiricism

Pratt notes the Warsh lament that economics is not empirical enough. I think the Austrians would disagree. Empiricism can measure what has occurred; it can differentiate among hypotheses. However, to do that requires assumptions usually resting on static equilibria. If an economy is never in a static equilibrium, how valid are the empirics based on it. In addition, there are the errors that begin with the assumption of a normal distribution -- how often does that apply to economic data? Having said this, I think that looking at data is necessary and important. But, there is a difference between empiricism and examining data.